No More Graves
by qwanderer
Summary: Rhodey tells Widow what Tony looks for in a friend. It explains some things. {Sometimes I trap two characters in a cave just to see what they'll talk about. Sometimes the story never develops any plot or context beyond that. Warnings: past canonical character death, past minor OC death. Characters: Rhodey and Natasha. No ships.}


"So you're Tony's oldest friend."

Rhodey chuckled dryly. "Yeah. He talk about me?"

"No." Natasha smiled. "But then you know that he doesn't talk about much other than his tech."

"Not for long, no." He glanced her way. "So you gonna interrogate me? Find out where my loyalties lie, how to deal with me?"

She let a little guilt slip through her permanently guarded expression, then her knowing smile was back. "Someone's been talking about me, though. Not Tony."

Rhodey nodded. "I've been known to chat with Pepper, but she didn't get much of a read on you except 'competent and slightly unsettling.' Most of my info comes from Jarvis."

"And what does he think of me?" Natasha's face was blank, curious, wide-eyed.

"J says you're OK," Rhodey said, and watched her. There was a flicker of something that made him think she had been braced for another answer. "Thinks it's good for Tony to have him working with a team."

"It is," she said, nodding. "He's gotten much more stable. Bruce, especially, I think, has helped with that. Having someone as smart and volatile and lonely as he is, to be able to look at that from the outside..."

Rhodey nodded. "Of course, the indestructible green science project. Bet he loves that."

Natasha shook her head. "That's not all he sees. And it's not just a reflection of himself, either." She sighed. "I made a mess of Tony's evaluation, back during the palladium scare. I got a warped view of him, so did SHIELD, so did Steve. My bad call. I didn't think I'd ever be able to trust him at my back." She gave a dry, barely audible chuckle. "Now I'm surprised he trusts me with his."

Rhodey's eyes drilled into her. "You know what qualities Tony looks for in friends?"

She shook her head. "I have a feeling you're going to tell me, at least a version that you believe and that you think will make me feel better. Don't waste your breath. I may be good at acting the part, but I know when it comes down to it I'm a pretty crap human being."

Rhodey just smiled. "None of us are really that great at it. Even Cap trips up sometimes. Hey, if he were perfect, he wouldn't have freaked out at Tony, no matter how skewed a picture he'd gotten."

"It was my _job._"

"Yeah, to assess his weak points and potential as an asset, and man, has he got weak points in the 'working in teams' area." Rhodey wrinkled his nose a bit. "And I've underestimated his judgement because of that. He wanted me in on the Iron Man project from the beginning, and I shut him down, told him he needed to work my way or not at all. His problem with teams is he knows that he's usually right, because he's usually right." He chuckled. "Now never tell him I said that." He sighed. "I misjudged him, I shut him down, and he trusts me with the only set of full iron man armor he's ever given away. He isn't looking for people who are always right the first time. He's looking for people who can admit their mistakes."

Nat pondered. "Something tells me that if that were the only factor, he'd have let a lot more people close a lot sooner."

"Yeah, you know what else he needs out of his friends?" Rhodey's eyes had gone distant and serious. "I'll tell you something. I'll tell you about the Tony I knew when we were at MIT."

Nat settled in, listening closely to what she knew was an important confidence, one few had heard before and she would almost certainly never get a chance to hear again.

"Tony liked people, you know? He was sixteen and yeah, he was a showoffy little shit, but most people didn't care, because he just got so into his work and he would talk about it to anyone who would listen. He'd be talking to a huge crowd of people in one of the cafeterias about, I don't know, streamlined production or silicon impurities or the ghost in the machine, and he'd just be beaming, and he listened to everyone and answered questions; he just loved sharing what he knew. I wasn't the only person who had the privelege of staying up all night talking tech with him."

Natasha nodded gravely, picturing it, the kid she'd seen in old photographs, proudly showing off his robots. He'd looked almost happy. "What changed?"

"Two things happened," Rhodey said, voice grim. "One, his parents died. And two, he survived his first assassination attempt." Rhodey's eyes narrowed at the pain of the memory. "The gunman missed, but the bullet hit one of our friends. Mark. It was at his _parents' funeral._ Those assholes couldn't even let him take a breath." He paused, not quite able to say how much this still affected him. "Tony... well, he took it as a sign that he shouldn't get close to anyone. He pushed everyone away, hard. Started kicking people out of his workspaces and only talking to his bots."

Natasha looked on steadily. "So what was different about you?"

The corner of Rhodey's mouth quirked up, just slightly. "Nothing, at first. But I wouldn't give up. He told me to stay away, that he didn't want me around. But I knew he shouldn't be by himself. So I stuck by him, whether he wanted me or not. Even when he wouldn't talk to me. It wasn't until I got in a brawl over some insults people were throwing around about him, and I came back with a couple of bruises, that he even acknowledged I still existed." Rhodey sighed. "And that was to yell at me for being an idiot, for looking for trouble. I said I could take care of myself, that boot camp wasn't even the roughest thing I'd been through, that MIT was nothing compared to the streets of Philly, no matter who you were friends with." Rhodey grimaced. "He stuck close after that. After a while I realized I was the only one he trusted not to die."

Nat frowned. "That's..." She contemplated for a moment. "That explains some things."

Rhodey breathed out pointedly. "Yeah. Sometime you can have the story of why he doesn't like being handed things. But not today. I'm done reliving bad memories."

Natasha pondered for a while longer. "I'm glad he has Bruce," she said finally. "I knew they got along, but... that fills in a gap."

"Yeah, me too," said Rhodey. "And I'm glad he has you. He's got Pepper to talk business with, Bruce for science, and me for dressing up in ridiculous armor to go punch out the bad guys. But now that you get how much he puts on a front to hide what his past did to him? I think it could help him a lot to have someone around who _really_ gets that."

Natasha's face was absolutely blank of reaction. "Jarvis really did give you the complete rundown," she said.

"I always tell him to leave me in the dark about where he gets his info," Rhodey replied. "Plausible deniability. But yeah. I know he's thorough when he checks up on someone." He shot a look her way. "So do I get a pass on my motives?"

She smiled crookedly. "Well, considering you haven't talked about a single thing this whole time except Tony," she said, "yeah, you get a pass. I can tell how much you care."

"Right back at'cha," Rhodey shot at her.

Natasha considered that, and laughed.


End file.
